Metro Matters

When a Mayor Really Holds School Power

By JOYCE PURNICK

Published: November 4, 1996

CHICAGO—
IN overwhelmingly Democratic Chicago, where the outcome of the election is considered such a certainty that Presidential politics barely makes the 10 o'clock news, it is the school system that gets the headlines.

You cannot spend a day in Chicago without hearing about how the new schools chief dismissed a principal or set new standards and is so thoroughly shaking things up that admirers use the word ''unprecedented'' with giddy abandon.

A local story, for sure. But with relevance for New York because the man running Chicago's schools is Mayor Richard M. Daley's former budget director. And under a new state law, the Mayor appointed not only him but also Chicago's equivalent of a board of education.

For just over a year, the Mayor of Chicago has had what Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has periodically said he wants, too -- control over the schools. Conditions in Chicago and New York are not direct parallels. The Chicago school system, radically decentralized in 1988, has been among the most unstable in the country, more burdened by patronage and politics even than New York's. Another difference: Chicago's school budget does not flow through the city budget; New York mayors indirectly control the educational purse strings.

But the schools of both cities have much in common. ''Mayors in cities over 300,000, we have all same problems,'' Mayor Daley said in an interview in his Chicago office. ''When I was elected, I knew I had a major problem. The system got so bad, the middle class, white, black, Hispanic, Asian, younger people, they would say: 'I love the city and what you are doing, but I can't send my child to public school. We're leaving.' ''

He complained, as have New York mayors, that he would get the blame for bad schools anyway, so why not have the responsibility? ''I wanted that, if I was going to manage the city right,'' he said.

SKEPTICS contend that the Chicago Mayor actually preferred the status quo since it gave him a built-in excuse for poor schools. But in the summer of 1995, Illinois's Republican Legislature built a superstructure of mayoral control over the foundation of decentralization.

Accordingly, the Mayor named Paul G. Vallas -- a budget expert, not an educator -- to the new job of chief executive officer, and named his former chief of staff, Gery Chico, president of the board of trustees. Mr. Vallas soon made rare peace with the teachers union; expanded preschool education; eliminated automatic promotion for failing students and established mandatory summer school.

Mr. Vallas and his team also put together a financing plan for repairs and new construction; balanced the budget through 1999; cut the central bureaucracy by nearly 30 percent and removed 14 principals and almost 200 teachers and other employees for malfeasance, which would be a very difficult task in New York City.

The Chicago Teachers Union president, Thomas Reece, said he sees improvement, and not only because his union got a handsome raise. ''Before, people with various political agendas were on the school board,'' he said. ''And reform groups have been arguing about governance since 1989, but reform didn't get to the classroom. This group came in and said, 'Look, we're concentrating our resources and trying to get them into the classroom.' ''

Not everybody is happy. Critics include members of the local school councils worried about their power, supporters of dismissed principals, and some nonprofit ''reform'' groups that say the impact of the new policies have yet to be evaluated.

IT is too soon to know if the new system will raise student performance and lower the abysmal dropout rate. But the signs of stability alone have drawn support from parents, teachers, students and editorial boards. Some of the credit goes to Mr. Vallas, an enthusiastic man of 43 who takes risks. And some goes to the new setup and the prominent burden it puts on the Mayor.

''The fact that he has responsibility, and with that the potential for political liability means he's got to make sure this thing works,'' Mr. Vallas said. Mayor Daley is funneling more services to the schools, he said, but not using his influence to meddle.

Mr. Vallas said he thought the Chicago model could work in New York, but with a significant change. ''I would institutionalize segregation of city funds,'' he said. ''That way, schools do not become a source of subsidy for the city.'' He thought Mr. Giuliani would do right by the schools. ''But who knows what the next guy is going to do?'' he added.

Not that mayoral control is under consideration in New York. The Legislature still balks at relatively modest checks on community school boards' powers, and Mr. Giuliani has stopped asking for control of the school system now that he gets along with the nonconfrontational Chancellor, Rudy Crew.

New York's general indifference to structural change is a pity. Chicago's provocative experiment in improving public education -- what Mayor Daley calls ''the heart and soul of a city'' -- may not be transferrable. It may not even succeed. But at the least, it rates some attention.